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Urdha
"Welcome to the world at the end of the world. The skies are shrouded with burning, oily smoke, the earth groans under a poisoned corpse, and the only way out may be deeper into the belly of the beast. Like Reality Thaumata or Reality Futura, worlds we've visited before, this is a world about a flavor and a feel as much as it is about extrapolation. That said, this world should have a harder edge to it -- it's a world nearly killed by the death of wonder, although not all the wonders are dead. Think of it as a cross between Richard Wagner and Tom Waits, or between Ken Russell and Ken Loach. Put the "grim" back in "grime" and see the world outside the smeared Perspex windscreen. See it smolder. See if you can save it." History Nazi mystics claim that Patton's death in September, 1944 was the main cause to what followed but it is not exactly clear what is the true cause. All anybody knows is that after Wagner's Götterdämmerung was played for 24 hours straight in July 1945 Garm howled, the moon turned blood red, and Jörmungandr, the Midgard Serpent, 600 miles across appeared and promptly ate three troop convoys and their escort carriers 100 miles south of the Azores. On July 21, 1945, the United States used the Trinity Device to kill Jörmungandr. It worked but also spewed radioactive venom into the atmosphere changing those it came in contact with. It also freed the bound giant who had betrayed the gods (called Loge or Loki, Prometheus by Eton-and-Oxford lads, and Nasren, greatest of the Narts, by the Ossetians) who made its way to Moscow where another god hater ruled. The death throws of Jörmungandr devastated huge parts of western Europe and other parts of the world. "It is the third year without a summer since the Fall of the Serpent. President Earl Warren has held onto Hawaii, turning the Japanese back toward China and their endless war there. There's no more stomach for war in the Pacific, and the Russians are welcome to the wreck of Europe. The Americans (and Texans) have their own continent to win back again, from the things that wash up now with every Atlantic tide. The last of the great monsters have been driven back down east of the Rockies. Negotiations with Texas are going well -- perhaps President Garner will consider running on a joint ticket in 1948. If the Army says it's safe to hold elections, that is. Fascist Mexico and Argentina are making noises about war; with who, nobody quite knows. Franco and the surviving French have come to their own agreement. The Welsh still swear to Queen Margaret in Sydney, as does some of India ("Congress India" is fighting two or three civil wars), and South Africa, and what's left of Canada. It is British Petroleum who came up with drilling the Serpent for oil, and Royal Dutch Shell who set up the great cracking plants in Wales and Kenya to refine it. The Russian advisers in Arabia and Persia don't like it, but there's nothing they can do, yet. It is the Royal Navy that dives deep to salvage things from the rift where Jörmungandr rose. It is the Royal Society who have cut into the Serpent at Hereford, and (at hellish cost) brought back living samples of the things, the cultures, swarming in its cavernous belly. It is Rhodes University men who took those writhing creatures and strapped them down and drew out the sera and built the equipment that allowed Sir Edmund Hillary and his team to climb to the top of the Spine and look down at the curving world, and Vickers who hired Goddard from New Mexico to build the rocket planes to get there faster. It is Prime Minister Menzies and his government who alone seem worried about what Stalin means when he promises a "final titanic struggle." Spies, and rocketeers, and oil-men, and speleo-herpetologists gather in Sydney and Capetown and Plymouth and Nairobi, and wonder if the sun has set on the British Empire at last, or if somewhere in this smoke-stained poisoned world there is still room for a green and pleasant land." References Pyramid 0518.6 Category:Apocalypse Settings Category:No Quantum Provided